Sun Tzu taught a set of powerful methods for winning constructively in competition. The Science of Strategy Institute's multiple award-winning work makes the strategy of The Art of War easier to use.

 

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Today's Article on Warrior's Rules

Sun Tzu's The Art of War teaches us how to win productively instead of destructively. Our Warrior's Rule Book makes its lessons easy to use. Regular reading reinforces your gut instinct for its interlinked rules.  New articles appear daily from our outline of  topics according to this schedule.

"You make your men powerful in battle with momentum.
This should be like rolling round stones down over a high, steep cliff.
Momentum is critical.
" Sun Tzu's The Art of War 5:5:13-15

"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.”   James Russell Lowell

Many people don't get any benefit from their creativity. Sun Tzu see momentum as potential energy. It needs to be converted into movement. His analogy is converting an object's potential energy into movement by rolling it downhill. People fail to see how creativity must be used as a part of the larger process. In school, many of us are taught to confuse creativity with self-expression, which is an end in itself. The solution to this confusion is to recognized creativity and the momentum it can product only as means to an end.

In Sun Tzu's system, our creative opportunity is part of the larger process. Sun Tzu's strategy is a method for making decisions about changing conditions to improve positions. We use creativity to create surprise, surprise to create momentum, momentum to complete a move, and a move advances our position in a way that pays. Our opportunity is to combine innovation with standards to create surprise (7.1.3 Standards and Innovation).  We combine surprise with timing to create momentum (7.4 Competitive Timing).  We combine momentum with our current position to complete a move. We combine this move with economics to make our position pay.

The following six rules look at how momentum not only completes a move but makes it pay.

  1. In competition, our physical positions arise from other peoples support of our position. All of our asset come from our position--the paycheck from our job, the good will in our business, social, and personal relationships, and our property and other assets. That position depends on others recognizing our rights of ownership. Without that support, we lose those assets (2.3 Personal Interactions).
  2. Temporary momentum changes people's subjective view of our position.  The momentum itself may fade, but the fact that we have been creative and surprising becomes part of our position's history. People's persistent attitudes about us factor in these abilities made visible by a momentum shift (1.2 Subobjective Positions).
  3. The momentum from surprise completes the move to setup claiming rewards.  Just like standard responses set up the expectations that surprise changes to create momentum, that momentum sets up the expectations that...
 
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